Pages

One Little Word Wednesday: Thread

Kids really say the most amazing things. Yesterday in a third grade class, I introduced the students to writing snapshots. I used Barry Lane's ideas about how details are like boxes inside boxes and writers zoom in with their words like photographers zoom in with their cameras. I read aloud samples from wonderful authors and shared some of my own writing. Using a slide show of images on the smart board as inspiration, the kids made their first attempts at writing their own snapshots. It wasn't easy for them. I didn't expect it be. I told them that they had to try to push through their struggle, like lifting a heavy weight or running a long distance. They had to try. All the students shared one sentence from their snapshot. I heard similes, great hooks, and complex sentences. Then they shared their whole snapshot with someone near them. After the lesson, two excited boys came up to me before heading out to lunch recess. The first one said, "I know what I could do! I could go back to my book I'm making and add a snapshot and put a simile in it." I was stunned. This young writer was beginning to weave together all the threads of the lessons we had done together throughout the trimester. The other little boy plum blew me away. He said, "Writing is fun. I used to like gym but now I like writing better." He actually thought that writing was more fun than gym. I couldn't agree more.